معرفی
Claire Bessant is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University's School of Law, specializing in socio-legal research at the intersection of privacy, technology, and family law. She serves as PGR Lead and Ethics Lead for Northumbria Law School, and is a Fellow at CONNECTED by DATA. Her work focuses on children's privacy, family privacy, and domestic abuse, with significant contributions to government consultations on these topics.
Her educational background includes:
- PhD in Law from University of Leicester (2021) on "Parental Views about the Importance of Family Privacy and its Protection in English Law"
- MA in Academic Practice (2011)
- LLM in Advanced Legal Practice (2002)
- LLB (Hons) in Law with French (1994)
Claire Bessant's research primarily explores the impact of technology on children's privacy, particularly the phenomenon of "sharenting" (parents sharing information about children online). She examines how family privacy functions as an ideology that protects families from state intervention while enabling parental decision-making. Her work extends to school social media use, dark patterns in digital interfaces, and domestic abuse protection frameworks. She takes an interdisciplinary approach, collaborating with researchers across multiple fields to develop policy recommendations.
Her recent publications reveal a strong trend toward examining children's rights in digital environments, with increasing focus on data-driven decision-making, GDPR compliance in educational settings, and the legal frameworks surrounding parental sharing of children's information online. Her work bridges legal scholarship with practical policy recommendations, often stemming from empirical research with parents, children, and educators.
Claire has received recognition for her scholarly contributions:
- Joint winner of the TwentyForty Essay Competition (2019)
As PGR Lead for Northumbria Law School, Claire supervises PhD students and is actively accepting new PhD candidates interested in sharenting, children's privacy, family privacy, and domestic abuse. She has secured significant research funding, including projects funded by AHRC for the OMDDAC research on data-driven approaches to Covid-19, and currently leads the "Investing in Children Longitudinal Study" (2022-2027). Her research collaborations span international boundaries, working with academics in the US and other countries on parental awareness of digital risks to children.
Claire is an active member of Northumbria's Gender, Violence and Abuse Interdisciplinary Research Theme management group and participates in multiple research networks including the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR). She contributes to policy discussions as a member of the ESRC, AHRC and UKRI Peer Review Colleges, and has provided expert input to government and parliamentary consultations on privacy and domestic abuse issues.
